


la douleur exquise

by juliettes



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Angst, Death, I'm Sorry, Love at First Sight, M/M, everyone is some kind of sad, failed characterization, references to blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-08-20 18:38:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20232505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliettes/pseuds/juliettes
Summary: eliott was pretty, features striking as he went about the parlor, the church, the mortuary, colors contrasting. it hurt, somewhere under the hollows of his ribs — it ached.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> have never failed at characterization as much as i have here, sorry.

he doesn't look it, that's what lucas noticed first. all fair, all reds, all blacks. he doesn't look like the death around him. eliott demaury's hair is an obsidian, matching the grays in his pupils, his lips an impossible shade of red. when eliott demaury looks at him maybe his heart flutters, and maybe his heart breaks, too. "hello," there's something distant to his voice, almost cold as the weather around them, "do you need something?"

"no, i'm—" lucas gestures vaguely, eyes averted.

"you're just looking."

“probably.”

there's an uncomfortable quiet all of a sudden, heavy, until there's the sharp ringing of the landline. and like that, eliott disappears back inside the house. darkness seems to follow him like the plague, consuming all the sounds and weight about him, shadows lifting as soon as he leaves.

lucas stands idly in the middle of the churchyard, headstones and crooked gates and gnarled yews surrounding him. the churchyard is on the outskirts of the industrial town lucas is from, mouthed by dense woodlands and mountains, rural and freezing. everything grows atop each other; hungry, perennial things grappling for survival through the hiemal months. the church beside the grave is old, forgotten like the rest of the ruins. roof caved, floors barely remaining. it's rotted and decaying, and standing outside feels like standing inside a starving skeleton.

he walks slowly up the path edged by yellow flowers and dried grass before crouching beside a familiar headstone. it’s old, left to age and the forgotten. he brushes a finger along the silver engravings, wiping away the dust that settled with time, impervious to everything else.

"you're still here," a voice startles, and lucas turns. eliott is staring at him. he's otherworldly, lucas thinks briefly, looking uncannily like the dead itself. maybe he's a ghost, steps always too silent, syllables all nocturnes.

"— sorry."

"we're not closing yet," eliott shrugs, voice low. gloves are pulled to his wristbone, now, and there's no other visible skin aside from the fairness of his face. "stay longer if you want, there's no patients today."

patients. _corpses_. it's an oddly plain word for what it is. lucas shakes his head. "i'll just go, it doesn’t really matter." then he straightens sheepishly, stumbling over his words. "i didn't mean to stay for so long."

"sure." steam swirls in front of him as he speaks. eliott leaves, and lucas stares at his back, an odd kind of curiosity blooming in his chest. he follows him out then, down the path he came from, nighttime barely a glimmer on those eerie hues.

they don't speak and somehow there's no need to fill the silence. it's slippery, roots jutting out from the ground, everything painted in every shade of gray now that the sun has dipped well below. the churchyard has taken on the smell of the forest, clean and bucolic, and it smells alive, strangely enough, even though the air they breathe is full of hollowed souls. eliott demaury never asks who he is — or his name.

(but lucas' seen him more than once, by the window. he's seen eliott demaury with those gloves. someone cries softly, white sheets, coffin, flowers, a hyperbolic quiet amid the noise. he stays there longer than he should. eliott was pretty, features striking as he went about the parlor, the church, the mortuary, colors contrasting. it hurt, somewhere under the hollows of his ribs — it ached.)

to his surprise, it starts to rain halfway down the steps. droplets slide down his neck, his face, plastering his hair across his forehead. it soaks lucas down to the bone, adding to the grayness. he sneezes, shivery and cold, slightly frustrated. eliott seems to be used to it and somehow, he even manages to look less wet than him. "it tends to do that a lot here," eliott comments, as if noticing lucas' curiosity, "the weather. it rains often here suddenly."

"oh— " lucas swallows his words, not really sure on why. eliott watches. his pupils are coal even in the darkness, a touch silver from the dimly lit streetlights. "— do you mind it? the rain, i mean."

"you get used to it, i guess," he shrugs, slowing down his pace until they walk side by side, leading him toward the exit. gargoyles with their broken faces glare at them on their way out, teeth foreboding. "do you need a ride?"

"i'll walk, i don't really mind."

"it's raining—"

"— lucas. i'm lucas lallemant, by the way."

"it's raining, lucas," eliott continues softly. lucas likes the way he says his name, the raspy hue of it, the strange familiarity it carries.

it's an unexpected kind of offer, and it makes lucas flustered, embarrassed, his face flaring with heat. they don't know each other. or rather, eliott doesn't even know him. there aren't many things lucas knows about eliott, either. he knows a name. a job. the crimson that settles on his hands sometimes.

when they're finally outside, the cold bites at lucas' skin and renders eliott's cheeks a light pink. "i should go."

"see you around, then," he nods.

his breath catches, and maybe it isn’t from the icy air. “okay."

"_okay_."

lucas walks away, feeling eyes on his back, an unnatural sort of warmth spreading over his chest. the scent of pine and rain, dirt and death — it follows him all the way back home.

("don't let him learn you name," arthut says, almost teasingly enough_._)

there is a charm beneath his strangeness. built entirely of edges, made of both bones, glass, together a scary combination. there's always blood in eliott's hands — lucas watches, seeing the blood but never the body. always, always the blood. a fresh red on the pale of his hand in gorgeous crimsons, hidden under clothing, on the edges of trimmed fingernails.

the room lucas enters is entirely in monochrome, color leached from the walls, floor, ceiling. when he steps inside the hall, a heavy dark consumes him and as he moves, the floorboards creak under his feet. roses and lilies choke the ceiling, edges crisp inside, clinging on to the last threads of life. lucas had been here once before, when his grandmother passed. he recognizes the scent of decay amid the flowers, the rotting hidden by layers and layers of sustenance. "you're here." lucas blinks. there's no surprise in his voice, recognition but nothing else. his eyes are a dozen colors and colorless all at once, and up close, he's a ghost. translucent. unliving.

“i can go—"

everywhere, it lacks the mortal, the breathing, and what's left of the remains of a life is simply dust.

lucas' swallow is audible, but eliott just stares, just _looks_, and all lucas can see are the black hole he has for eyes and the stars they swallowed whole. he averts his gaze, body shrinking. "visit your grandmother," is eliott's return, then he goes back to the files, gloved fingers flipping through yellowed folders. "— you haven't visited in a while."

it's cold, so cold, devoid of the warmth of flesh and blood and soul, but maybe it's only him, or maybe it's just the dead. it must have been the tiredness, the nights spent awake in a bed that felt too warm, but the words leave his mouth recklessly. "how’ve you been?" he stops. they don't speak — at least not for a while, not until lucas gathers his words again. "sorry, i—"

the cabinet rattles shut. "visit your grandmother.” his footsteps echo on the hardwood floors. closer, gaze softer, eliott demaury, human, stands in front of him. "she probably misses you." this close, he no longer smells like the forest, the dirt; everything around him smells sterile, and with each breath lucas' lungs burn. "stay a bit more, too, if you want. i don't mind the company. "

there's not much to do, but it’s an uncharacteristic offer so lucas agrees of course. eliott is surprisingly careful with him even without words, never prying, never asking questions, and after lucas wipes the dust from the headstone, adds fresh flowers, he stays. he wanders around the first floor, but never goes any further. under the window there's a piano, blended in with diluted browns. eliott's nowhere to be found, but the ache of grief echoing throughout is too blatant, so lucas walks around again, each corridor more intricate than the other, each dark and entirely devoid of color.

the ceiling above him, lucas notices, is painted in the deepest shades. blues and purples and nothing like the stripped palette of red or black or white. the home had just closed, the flickering _open _sign having died into a crackle of gray.

“it’s pretty.”

“it looks like the sky, doesn’t it?"

"i don't see the stars very often," lucas admits, glancing upward. there's too much pollution where he lives to see clearly, but the way eliott says it is almost affectionate, conveying a certain fondness.

"ah, well, you can go outside and see them." he turns to face him with a thing of a grin. lucas sucks in a breath, uncharacteristically flustered.

they go, him and eliott. they stand outside, metres apart, the fallen murmuring along with the wind in their ears, the past and the present, their memories — it drifts by, engraved in the veins of the forest surrounding them. it's unexpected, the gentleness eliott carries, different from the version that lucas made him out to be. "do you like it here?" it’s said in careful tones, small.

there's a moment of silence before eliott shrugs. "it's where i live." the despair in his eyes is barely visible under those wispy lashes. he pulls the gloves he momentarily took off back on, carefully, sighs coming out in feathery swirls. that’s how he handles things, _carefully_, like everyone and everything is made of glass and not human material. "it's my job, lucas. it’s the only thing i can do." lucas opens his mouth for some reason, but no sentences form. "you can't make the dead any colder." he smiles, plainly, lacking neither humor nor pain. 

nothing else is left to say.

the sun sets. there's not much he hasn’t seen, but eliott takes him around the chapel, graveyard, morgue, his house (only the first floor), explaining things but not really, vaguely, melancholy to his voice, and lucas stares, enthralled. nighttime is dark and tainted with a coldness beyond the canny. he shivers, clothes thin, always too thin against the frosty climate.

"it's getting late." there’s a soft hint of reluctance in eliott's voice. mist drapes over them, covering everything in filmy layers. then adding, the barest bit hopeful: "i should get back."

"i'll drive you," there's a small smile, a real one now, and something unwaning flutters underneath lucas' ribcage. they’re standing at the gates like they were weeks before. "i don't mind. i'm guessing you don't live far, so let me drive. if you're uncomfortable—"

"no, you're not," he is quick to reply, anxious, heat on in his cheeks. "you're not — uncomfortable." he shrugs. then, forcing words out roughly, faced the other way, he mumbles: "drive me home."

lucas goes to school, goes to the grounds fairly often, but he only finds out slivers of eliott’s history. he has artwork somewhere in the upper floors, he likes coffee sweet (and the way it keeps him up at night), he likes edm but there’s a piano somewhere, his family is faceless and here is where he belongs. lucas doesn’t ask about the gloves or the dreary shadows on eliott’s face. he likes the way things are, the discordant familiarity, the closing distance, their lives tangling together like loose fraying threads. he doesn’t stay around for long anymore, though, because autumn has given way to winter, given way to the snow and the death — _all that dying_. it makes him sick. he stays, still, albeit not after sunset. time seems gossamer in the yard, the present blended with fog and ice, blurring scenes around them. sundown swallows the landscape purple and eliott is driving him home, gloveless.

there’s blood under his fingernails when he looks. “you’re not wearing them,” lucas points out, cautious.

“i forgot.” his voice is sharp. “i probably left it back there.”

“we can go back and get it,” he offers, staring at his fingers that are bony and thin, pale like ivory stone. it’s surprising to see: hands around the steering wheel, delicate like the rest of him he conceals under his dark clothing. lucas’s eyes fall on his neatly trimmed nails, revealing the ugly crimsons usually hidden away.

“we’re nearly at your place.” he turns to glance over at lucas briefly, at the hands on his lap, dark hair falling across his smudgy eyes. his gaze seems to linger, before they finally go back on the road. “— do you mind?”

“no,” he shrugs. it’s a lie they both know. “it’s what you do.”

“but you do,” eliott’s tone isn’t mean, just flat. he talks hollowly, tiredly, almost, seemingly detached from the living things around him. he’s fractured, lucas thinks, been broken and put back together far too many times to have mended properly. “i don't mind that you do.”

lucas doesn’t reply. the radio has faded into somewhat of a monotonous background noise along with the gentle rumble of his car, rain melting with the scent of gasoline and leather. he pulls up in front of lucas’s apartment moments later, looking out of place with the buildings and smoke and LEDs surrounding them.

“— buy me food.”

he shuts his eyes, swallowing, fingers tight around the door handle_. _eliott’s knuckles are white on the gear shift. lucas feels himself shrink, red coloring his vision, his skin. eliott stares, lucas stares back. the quietness is overbearing. it seems to last a lifetime, seconds, maybe, minutes, possibly, an interruption to the normalcy of the world around them. “we can go out to eat, that’s all—,” _hesitant_, “eliott.”

eliott blinks. it does things, probably. it sounds too close, too familiar, too intimate. the request hangs in the air. “— why?” he asks, bluntly. lucas just shrugs.

“i want to.”

“you want to.”

“yeah, i do,” he says, even though it’s a shitty answer with little resolve. anxiety, like a small disruption, eats away at his edges. _want _isn’t absolute. there are gaps in that word, the many variables. “just, eat. we don’t have to do anything else.”

a drawn inhale, a raised brow. “that’s not a reason.”

“it’s what friends do.”

“ah.”

“have you not—”

he sees the shift in him — it’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because eliott’s face hardens, affronted. his solitude is a remembrance. the aloneness eliott seems to bear as one is bounded by the grim façades he wears, the nothingness, all of it gnawing at eliott’s hems. he watches eliott shut off the ignition. thick, heavy air consumes them once again. their eyes meet over the silence.

“it doesn’t happen very often.”

(they eat out — once, then twice, then five times, and by then lucas stops counting. things don’t change much. his hair grows long, he cuts it. he stays outside when the bodies, the abyss of eliott’s eyes, become too dark to bear, sorrow too blatant. the chapel crumbles bit by bit, eliott doesn’t come close. lines have been drawn, but lucas doesn’t know where. lucas learns of the countless gloves eliott has lying around his home, all of them black, none of them revealing skin, grief lying in holes. everything he owns bleeds tragedy. and, sometimes, lucas imagines what it would be like to touch eliott — if it’s hollow under his skin, if stone is what his fingers would meet.)

nothing changes. it’s the same today, also. no one comes in. eliott’s in the mortuary where it freezes all over, his skin a paler shade than ivory, _i won’t be long mind the telephone we’ll have lunch later, _it rains, and fog veils over the churchyard. flowers and weeds flourish with the rain in watercolor shades. he snaps a camellia from its stem. it gets trampled on not long after.

there’s a small office inside when lucas looks in to the shabby white building of a morgue, chaos and violence brooding between sheets of paper and newspaper clippings. and beyond that, a brown door. heavy silence permeates the air as it always does. lucas waits on the bench, shivery and cold, until the door opens, meeting red-rimmed eyes, bare hands. “you’re here,” eliott comments, sounding distant and strange, like all those months ago.

“i just—” lucas stands up when eliott locks the door, jittery. “i was bored—”

“you shouldn’t,” eliott sighs. “you don’t like it over there, already. it’s worse here.”

from the building to the house, they walk together, but not close, the little heat eliott wicks off still warmer than the air. eliott never looks at him; something unbidden blossoms in him. it’s silly and small, but it makes his mouth snap shut. embarrassment, shame, it comes all at once like an ugly monster.

“why do you do that?” eliott stops. he turns, searching his face. “push me away,” lucas carries on, glanced toward the steps they came from, the headstones, a pointy pain blooming across his chest. his voice is quiet, hurt lacing his words. eliott steps closer, lucas steps back._ younger, reckless, diffident_, everything unspoken — it’s all there. “i don’t know what you want,” he says. there's a bitter aftertaste to his words, but they come out sharp.

features cut like knives sharpen. “let’s go.”

“why?”

“why are you asking?”

“— because you don’t like me?”

“because i care too much.”

the setting sun swallows them in bronzes and yellows. this time when eliott steps closer, lucas stays still and says, “that’s difficult to believe.”

it’s quiet, cold. he reaches forward, touching his hair lightly. lucas recoils instantly, chest cluttering with messy feelings, the expression of fondness too difficult to bear. it wears on for what feels like hours. “you should go.” he turns away, but lucas reaches forward, panicking, grabbing the hem of his shirt, stopping him, and lucas doesn’t yield. eliott halts in an instant. “_lucas_.” it’s breathed out weakly. his head falls forward onto eliott’s shoulder. 

still, lucas doesn’t shift an inch.

he crouches down wordlessly and away from lucas’s grasp. a blue violet, when eliott touches it, withers at once, dried and brown, dead petals crisping and falling at eliott’s feet, bled of all its color. eliott looks up, his gaze unfocused. he doesn’t seem to miss how lucas flinches, eyes to the delicate fingers that once held something living.

it strikes lucas with a sort of feeling he doesn’t quite understand. he doesn’t move when eliott shoves his hands inside his pockets, walking away without any more of a second glance. it’s not fear, lucas realizes, but something he can’t exactly name. “you should go home, it’s getting late.”

“fuck, _eliott_—" he catches up to him. eliott doesn’t slow, the ground uneven under them, and lucas doesn’t think before he acts. it only takes a moment, tight arms wrapped around his waist, and eliott freezes, his body is broader and glacial to the touch. lucas’s careful not to meet skin. they stay hushed for half a second, heart beating all wrong, matched to every single shuddery breath. eliott pulls away swiftly, almost reluctant, eyes wandering, searching.

“you need to go,” he says eventually, stiff but apologetic, and maybe there’s longing hidden in the layers of his voice. _please_. the words echo faintly, and it breaks him. “staying won’t do you any good. it never has.”

_past tense_.

a breeze sends shivers down lucas’s spine.

and he’s left alone, so alone and so cold, words too final.


	2. ii.

(“i think i have feelings for him.” it’s the first time lucas says this out loud. yann stops abruptly, in the quiet way that he does, his face drawing into a soft frown, and lucas hears him shift closer.

“what kind of feelings?”

“— i don’t know,” he shrugs, the truth spilling out. “love.”

he sucks in a breath, and the motion ripples the coffee in his mug. a moment of complete stillness, a lonely, lonely stillness, then the world moves forward again.)

for days onward, lucas feels ill. smoky scenes and neon lights fill his vision, ash in his lungs, everything in every contrived shade he knows. he misses the woods and surprisingly, the cold, too. days drag, morning and night, it feels too slow. an inexorable yearning fills his insides at every memory; rain, old cars, gloves — thoughts that make him burn altogether. eliott is so much of the terror the world has carved out of him — loneliness an old ballad he’s grown used to.

(_you miss him_, manon had said. those words are a lethal combination. he also finds it’s an undeniable truth.)

the bus is relatively empty. lucas lets his eyes wander, and they fall on a hunched figure dressed in black, a sight so familiar lucas might go frantic with the things pulled into the watery grave of his heart. it makes him stop and swallow and stumble. he sees charcoal pupils, but it’s not him. not at all.

his heart sinks.

he doesn’t know what makes him go, or what makes him knock on the door. it's a knowledge that he shouldn’t, but it happens, anyway, it always does. the home is closed, unsurprisingly, but the footfalls that come near are strangely sharp. it’s quiet there, every sound made reverberating into a hum of lurking ghosts. his door creaks open, the many locks broken. _no one comes_ _after dark_. pointless to repair.

“sorry, we’re closed for the day.”

lucas blinks, startled. something unpleasant rises in him, at the man, tall and warm-eyed, a polite smile adorning his face. “i didn’t—”

“i don’t work here, i’m just helping eliott. i’m idriss, by the way,” he offers, like he’d known his next question. lucas peers in through the darkness, but there’s no one. his cheeks warm, embarrassed. embarrassed to have tried, to have thought wrong.

“oh,” there’s an edge to lucas' voice, probably, hurt unconcealed. “i didn’t mean to bother, i’ll just—,” he motions to the road he just came from, sort of at a loss. lucas retreats with a shake of his head, a mumbled _sorry. _harsh wind bites his skin, a bruise starting to form in the void over his chest.

then a hand falls on his shoulder, and it leaves fast as it lays there. “lucas_._” it’s posed almost as a question, speech colored with unsure undertones. “is that your name?”

“how—” lucas turns back around again.

“eliott talks about you a lot,” idriss replies. “he’s sick. he’s upstairs, if you want to go see him.”

“i don’t—,” lucas shakes his head, suddenly reluctant to have ventured, “i don’t think it’s a good idea.”

he looks unconvinced. it grows quiet between them, awkward, before idriss says again, this time with a little less of a mechanical hue to his speech: “he misses you.” lucas blinks. “he hardly tells me anything, but you can tell,” idriss carries on, “he’s distant. he doesn’t talk much, but he talks about you. all the time. and it’s almost like i know you, too,” he laughs weakly, drops his hand from lucas’s shoulder, meeting his gaze, and there’s the slightest bit of sadness in them. “you should go see him, lucas. i think you want to, too.”

he exhales slowly, averting his gaze. “thank you.”

idriss smiles. it’s an oddly boyish smile, sorrow lurking in corners where lucas can’t see. opening the door wider, he points him to the second floor and lucas climbs up the stairs. he stops abruptly in front of the room beyond the landing, suddenly nervous. the smell of cedarwood and rain trace the air, and it makes his heart beat faster.

his bedroom is different from what lucas would expect, he thinks briefly, as he pushes the door open. small plants still in their plastic pots, curtains drawn shut, strewn clothes, monet replicas, silly glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling, a bed pushed by the tall window, messy brown hair under white blankets. it’s an organized chaos with eliott demaury colors despite everything. and it makes lucas just a bit flustered — to be in this kind of space, to be in his space.

“_go home_, idriss — i’m fine.” blankets rustle, the sound of a shifting body, exasperate groans.

“you don’t look fine.”

it barely takes a second before there’s frantic shuffling. “lucas?”

he shrinks in his hoodie even though eliott can’t see.

“— why are you here?”

“idriss said you were up here.” it’s a feeble reply, he knows.

“why?”

“i just,” his voice comes out a bit strained, eliott seems to notice. “i can leave if you want.”

“no, i—,” eliott stumbles out of his bed, then, legs tangled with the sheets, and suddenly he’s all _there_, in front of him. all this longing in just one boy. it steals the rosy oxygen out of his lungs, makes him cough and stammer on his breath, words awry and amiss. “i didn’t expect you.” he’s wearing pyjama shorts and a loose white shirt, angles peeking out from everywhere and lucas has to look away, look away, _look away_.

“you never do.”

“i don’t expect anyone to want to see me,” eliott says drily, and it lacks bitterness, just truth. “except idriss and sofiane — or maybe you, now.” he comes closer, and his hand hovers over lucas’s shoulder, his clothes, not touching, just _hovering_. eliott retreats his hand, slowly, and lucas’s chest hurts all over again, a despair that engraves itself in every part of his body. to touch, to hold, it’s a thorny thing.

lucas averts his eyes, thoughts scattering. “you,” he starts, glancing over the pink on his nose. “you look unwell.”

“i guess i am.” eliott moves back to his bed, stepping over the cluttered mess on the floor. swallowing, lucas stands idly where eliott left him. “it’s been a while since i’ve fallen ill.”

“— i can make you soup,” lucas offers, immediately tearing his eyes from his face to the floor.

“ah,” inquiring eyebrows, “idriss brought take-out.”

“oh.” there’s distance between them, bleak, muddy. eliott searches his face from across the room, hair a mess, and there’s a pair of gloves sitting on his bedside table. “who is he — idriss?”_what is he to you?_

rain drips down the window, clung to the foggy glass. “just an old friend from school,” eliott answers. nothing else is shared. lucas doesn’t want to ask any further.

he’s sitting beside eliott demaury in only a few moments, mattress huffing under their weight, knees touching, fabric between skin, hands on their own laps. they fall into silence. the edge of his gloves rests on his wrists. around them, the room is awash with every shade of gray, their clothes, too, and his eyes have difficulty adjusting to the darkness, bokeh in places where light barely glances off. there’s something in the air. something kinetic, distorted.

“i should go,” lucas suddenly blurts, though he can’t seem to inch away, “it’s late. mika's probably wondering where i am.”

eliott says nothing. his face is impossible to read, darkened and hidden in shadows, so lucas rises to go, and it’s a slow movement, because he wants to be stopped. he wants to be kissed and touched by a boy he’s hopelessly in love with. he _wants_, and it’s a terrible, selfish, needy verb scraping against his throat.

he catches his wrist, keeping it on the bed. his eyes are trained on the window. “stay.” eliott’s voice is tumultuous. “stay. stay until the morning.”

silence becomes dark water. “why?” there’s a soft hint of desperation. however relentless and wanting, it’s wrong. too little things being said, too little actions, but eliott asked him to stay, and lucas wants this badly, and in that moment, maybe it was enough. 

and then, to his surprise, eliott looks at him, sadstruck. slate blue eyes, black moons, marbled lines, they meet his own. “i want you to stay. stay with me, lucas, if you will.”

it’s not often eliott requests, or wants. he releases lucas’s wrist, then, and it almost aches to be free from his hold, the cold that was just on his wrist lingering like an afterthought. a chill that ran from his wrist to every corner of his body. it was unmistakable — the taking, the slow drain of mortality melting away like wax. the question hangs heavily. “— i’ll call mika.”

what comes after merges into a shapeless blur. there’s no cell service, so lucas calls mika on the landline and he exchanges one-sided words, and idriss says his good-byes, tells him to give eliott his well wishes. the night deepens, which makes the snapping of wood under his feet louder, walls colder, and everything else quieter. it’s oddly suffocating despite the high ceilings and empty spaces. _being around the dead often has that effect_. eliott’s in the bathroom, tap running. lucas is flustered, sat on the edge of the bed, heart in his throat.

the door swings open and eliott walks in, his hair dripping wet and he’s sniffling. lucas coughs, distracted, heat curled in on his cheeks. water slithers down the angles of his face. “you asked me to stay.”

“i did.” the rain comes down harder, all terribly loud, all too wet. “i’m not sure why,” eliott mutters.

his words are never flimsy — on the contrary, actually. always too truthful. “you don't?”

“no, i don’t.”

“why?”

“because,” he shrugs, “i don’t know how it’s supposed to work.”

and, like this, walking closer to eliott feels like walking underwater, heavy around his ankles. shackled, where they carry too much weight. “thank you,” lucas mumbles as he steps toward him, eyes skittering elsewhere, unable to hide the shame or embarrassment or longing. eliott blinks at him, humming. he picks up a jacket from the chair. “do you, maybe— is there something i could sleep on?”

“ah,” eliott smiles, drapes the jacket over lucas’s shoulder, hands hung above fabric. “but it’s early, isn’t it?”

“it just— it's dark outside,” lucas almost stammers, gesturing vaguely to the room around them as he steps back, the scent that was wrapped around him unbearable. "darker than usual, at least." eliott flashes a grin for the briefest second. he turns away, then, heading for the door.

a moment before eliott crosses the threshold, he glances over his shoulder. “you can take my bed. i hope you don’t mind that there’s no heater.”

“i don’t— but you’re sick—” lucas follows, footsteps reverbing.

“and you’re a guest. i’m no longer heaving my lungs out too, so—”

“we could share,” he’s fast to say, blush on his cheeks. “i mean—"

eliott stops to stare, pupils like spilled ink on paper. “yeah, we could,” he answers, thoughtfully, and it’s enough to make lucas look away. all things strange and charming and sad, eliott demaury is a study of it. the most inexplicable parts of him are made of some sort of dark magic, and it’s difficult to understand this but lucas finds that he doesn’t necessarily mind. “come on, i don’t think you’ve eaten yet. i’ll make you food.”

lucas looks at him, eyes wide, “i’m not really hungry.”

“you still need to eat.”

“i don’t—”

“is chicken and vegetables okay?” eliott cuts him. he nods sheepishly.

they walk past folders and framed paintings and thank-you cards, past the piano and the dusty bookcases. lucas offers to help but eliott dismisses it. his movements are light and somewhat immaterial as he cooks. standing to the side, lucas watches, enraptured. it’s rather mundane, bereft of the usual melancholy that comes with mending corpses, though somehow, lucas finds it most interesting.

“it’s been raining a lot more than normal since you’ve been gone,” eliott tells him, a bit of color returning to his cheeks as he stands in front of the stove. his gloves are to his side again. “what have you been up to? you go to school, don’t you?”

“yeah.”

“how old are you?”

“eighteen.”

eliott wordlessly sets down a plate of indiscernible food before starting the tap. “ah.” something unreadable crossed his face for a brief second before he turned back around. lucas goes back to his food, chewing slowly, rain easing into a placid drizzle, the even tick of the clock and running water faded to white noise. “i’m twenty. i don’t think i’ve ever told you.” turning toward him, he also adds, cheekily: "i don't think i ever told you i make the best food, either."

he snorts, raising his eyebrow. “you don’t tell me much.” the silence turns sharper. he dries the last of the pots and pans, lucas eats his food, all of it a strange combination of salty and sweet and fruity, but he's hungry, so he finishes it anyway. when eliott walks towards the piano lucas watches curiously. how pretty he looks, how it adds to these fatal, fatal feelings. “i haven’t seen you play before," he comments.

“i'm not the best,” eliott replies, cheeks going a shade deeper as he faces him, “it’s been a long while since i’ve been busy with, you know—”

“oh.”

he doesn’t say anything else. _liszt._ lucas walks forward, allured by the music, his presence, the ever-present quiet, entirely enchanted. it’s a grand thing, the piano. made of polished wood and pretty carvings, ivory keys and in the middle, a living reverie. the mere sight of eliott fills him with so much of that morbid longing. he stops. it’s only the echo of a lament. his heart tethers itself.

“sit.”

“no—”

“i know you can play.” his voice is wry. “just sit, i don’t bite.” eliott shifts to the side to make room, and lucas sits, taken aback. "you can probably play better than me."

he begins again.

eliott’s fingers are bony and thin, pale as stone as he plays. silver rings glisten under the forlorn lights. he stops, lucas finishes, notes melting sleepily against one another, fluid and graceful, sliding in the wind, slurred against the cold. there’s softness to it, a kind of despondence sung to each sound that prickles, and eliott stares at him, at his face. a strange breeze stirs the heavy curtains, ruffles his hair. the very last note drags. nobody says anything when he's done. eliott rises from the bench. black gloves are slid on.

“we should go to bed.”

“_eliott_—,” it’s a plea, a prayer, he thinks.

eliott stares at him for the longest time, pale eyes fathomless, and lucas looks back. he doesn’t know how it happens next, the messy clang of keys, ridges dug in his back blunt into his skin, eliott’s body fitted to his like badly healed bones. their eyes don’t meet. his weight is light, cold, aching.

“what?” eliott mutters, thinly, their bodies unmoving. lucas swallows. his mind denies any kind of thought, everything dimmed and slowed and lost to the feeling of eliott’s body against his. he sighs; lucas knows he’s suddenly uncomfortable from the way the air slips out through the crack between his lips. “you should move now.”

“don’t.” his breath, hot and uneven, ghosts across his neck. “don’t leave.” he wants to touch him, but he can’t. he’ll fall ill, he'll freeze to death, he’ll die. it’s a truth that bristles. “why did you ask me to stay?”

eliott’s hands lift from the keys, though he doesn’t otherwise move. “i told you,” he says. this time eliott turns completely, away from him, expression forlorn, maybe, but lucas grabs onto him, pulling him close so he won’t leave, so he can’t go. eliott looks at him. the wind shifts again and ruffles his hair. “one kiss, that’s all,” eliott murmurs, maybe to himself, searching his face for a rejection, “then maybe it’ll stop.” _i’ll freeze._ “can i have that?” _i’ll die. _

he nods and he’s breathless and it’s allaying, and his ribcage fills with his darkness, his void.

"yes."

eliott is careful with him, hands slid to the sides of lucas’s face, desire and despair, a messy combination, lips stone-cold and inhuman pressed to his own. ice seeps into the deepest layers of his soul. his lips are slightly chapped from the temperature, and maybe there’s the faintest metallic tang when eliott kisses him, slow and deliberate, hands curving up to his neck, and lucas wants this to last more than when the remains of his oxygen leave him. this moment, the wind and the piano and the mouth on his. the pain and the loveliness of it all.

but then slowly, inevitably, eliott pulls away.

“i’m sorry—,” his apology dies on his tongue when lucas draws him in again, heart beating in disarray.

it’s rough and invariably unpretty, and he doesn’t mean to but next, his lips are on eliott’s neck, and next, he’s against the wall, and next, they’re a tangle of limbs and heaving breaths stumbling up the stairs, and next, eliott has him pressed in the white sheets of his bed, hovering above. _angel_. hallowed, composed of obscure elements, magic and madness and meaning.

the absence of light has difficulty prying them apart, dull, cold silvers streaming from the gaps in the window. eliott touches him once, lucas shivers and shivers. it’s reckless behavior and entirely volatile and they’re burning alive. eliott allows it, strangely enough, because he pulls on his shirt and lucas’s hands wander lower, lower, mouth hot along collarbones in sloppy parabolae, pupils blown far too wide.

a glass of water is knocked off the bedside table at some point, and it breaks the spell they're under in an instant. eliott wrenches free from his hold.

“eliott—"

“i need to clean that up—”

“_later_,” he blurts.

“what?”

lucas swallows, body aching to be touched again. “later,” he repeats. eliott looks at him. he crawls over the sheets to sit on the edge of the bed where eliott’s stood, feeling the phantom touches, cold and exquisite.

shifting, lucas stands up to meet him.

the pain doesn’t register — not for a bit at least, but the mattress instantly dips with his weight and when eliott turns the lamp on, he hisses a quiet _fuck_. red stains the shards of glass, glistening with the light and the water on the floor.

“later,” eliott echoes softly, distantly.

lucas bites on his lip, embarrassed, prickly points of pain numbing his foot. “i can take care of this on my own.”

(he’s fumbling with the first-aid kit, fingers clumsy as he reaches for the bandages. lucas dares to look at eliott, feeling his pulse quicken when he pries the bandages from him.

“— i can do it.”

"i'm not the one with blood on my feet."

"well i'm not the one insisting that i need a surgical procedure."

at this eliott huffs a laugh, sitting on the tiles beside him, several inches between them. "i'd do a better job than you at bandaging your foot." a storm rattles the windows. lucas winces as the antiseptic stings the wound. he apologies, _i'm not used to tending to the living_, sorrow seeped inside his syllables, inside lucas' soul.

cigarette smoke fills the small confines of the bathroom. knees touching, eliott passes it to him, legs sprawled haphazardly on the floor, and lucas is acutely aware of how eliott touches him but doesn't, how lucas wants to kiss him but doesn't. words hang in the air unsaid. plastic wrappings from the plaster are what separate them, vapor clinging on to the wall from a shower two hours ago. the light tints everything a hospital shade of white. still, eliott is all kinds of appealing. he isn't looking at him but at his own hands, lucas takes a drag. it spills back out into the frosty silence, blue in the shadows, an exhale so soft amidst the hunger of a storm. lucas has red on his cheeks, from touches on his skin, the sweet, sweet presses. it hasn't left yet, that feeling. "i'm cold," he murmurs, shivering. the cigarette burns between his fingers.

"— we'll go back in." eliott stands, taking it from him. he flicks ash in the sink, tap creaking as it gets turned on, running water echoing all around them.

"i don't think it'll be warmer there," lucas answers, hoarsely. "your bedroom."

"yeah, maybe."

the tap shuts. eliott puts the cigarette between his lips — the safest and closest thing to a kiss. standing, lucas brushes past him to the bin and watches as the wrappers fall in. his eyes are ringed purple as he stares at his reflection, at the pallor he isn't used to seeing in all his eighteen years, at eliott staring right at him through it. the ethereal sort of eyes blink, then dart away. the tip of his ears are stained red. walking hurts, bandage tight around his foot. "are you coming?" lucas says, finally pushing open the door, careful. "i think i need to sleep.")

**Author's Note:**

> i'm [@unquaintly](http://unquaintly.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, but i think this shall be my last fanfic until, possibly, season 5 comes out. ♥


End file.
